Good Friday Message
From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
Matthew 27:45-54
The passage above depicts the outpouring of God’s wrath and God’s glory revealed through the darkness, through the pain, through the suffering. From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness covered the land. The darkness came. Jesus endured the darkness, and after that, Jesus cried out in anguish, quoting Psalm 22:2, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the darkness, Jesus experienced God’s absence. He felt abandoned. The instant Jesus breathed His last breath, the temple curtain, the curtain separating the Holy of Holies, was torn in two from top to bottom, and an earthquake shook the ground, and tombs were opened and formerly dead saints appeared in Jerusalem, and bystanders came to believe that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. The scene is an image of God’s wrath poured out on the Father’s only begotten Son, and through the darkness God’s glory is revealed. In response to the events on that first Good Friday, some came to believe even before the Resurrection.
But why? Why did God pour out His wrath on Jesus?
The message for today, Good Friday, focuses on God’s holiness. We cannot understand what holy is because our brains are too small, our language is too limited, we have no earthly example. God is holy, divine, righteous, pure. The words roll off our tongues so easily, but we cannot grasp their meaning. He cannot look at sin. He hates sin. We are sinful people with evil in our hearts living in this dark world surrounded by evil. Our sin is so serious, it cannot be overlooked, and sinful beings are precluded from entering God’s holy presence. Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” The infinite sin of humanity requires an infinite being making an infinite sacrifice. God takes sin so seriously that He poured out His wrath on His only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, so that our sins are forgiven. It is real sacrifice for real sin and real forgiveness. And the foundation of it all is God’s holiness.
At the cross we see the most horrific evil imaginable and God’s wrath poured out in shocking display, and through it we see the ultimate display of God’s love, mercy and the majesty of His glory. Evil, wrath, love, mercy and God’s glory all meet at the cross.
Scripture presents a truth that pain, suffering, darkness leads to the revelation of God’s glory. God’s glory is revealed through the darkness. God’s glory is revealed through the cross. As Paul concludes chapter 11 of Romans: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
Scripture tells us that God’s glory is revealed through His signs, wonders and miracles, and this often involves God shining His light in the depths of darkness. When Jesus healed the blind man, Jesus said the man was blind so that God’s glory might be revealed through him (see John 9:3). The man suffered for years before God revealed His glory. Before Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, He said that the illness that killed Lazarus was for the revelation of God’s glory (see John 11:4). Lazarus suffered to the point of death before God revealed His glory. During Jesus’ ministry on earth, He healed countless people of sickness, disease and demons. Each individual, each person lived in darkness, they suffered, they were tormented, their lives were less than full, and then God revealed His glory to them and through them.
The darkness of the world and God’s glory meet at Jesus, and His light overcomes the darkness. The ultimate representation of this is the cross. At the cross we see the darkest darkness of the world, we see evil on shocking display, we see God’s wrath, and through the cross we see God’s love, mercy and grace, we see God’s glory in its ultimate manifestation. It all intersects at the cross.
What does the cross represent to you? Do you ever wear a cross? Do you ever wear a necklace, bracelet, ring or other jewelry bearing a cross? When you choose to put that on, what does the cross represent to you? In August 1990, I had the amazing opportunity to visit the USSR just as the nation was crumbling, and the rules and norms were changing, and uncertainty filled the air. I tagged along with my father on a business trip. One night we had dinner with some of the men my father had been meeting with and their wives. One of the women wore a gold cross neckless and someone commented on it and the woman explained that under Soviet rules people did not wear crosses because Christians were excluded from certain privileges of society, but after the fall everyone was pulling out their crosses to boldly wear, but then she said, for most it was a mere fashion statement, not a statement of faith. For us, here, today, we must guard against allowing symbols of faith to become mere fashion, because the cross is the ultimate manifestation of God’s glory, not a mere fashion statement.
As you think about the cross around your neck, please consider the truth that Jesus’ death on the cross happened for the purpose of revealing God’s glory. The cross was not a surprise. God preordained it. The prophets foretold it. Jesus knew it was about to happen. God willed it to happen. God is glorified by it. As awful and ugly and dark as it is, it reveals God’s glory. The cross presents an inescapable yet indescribable contrast. Through the cross we see God’s glory, yet at the cross we see evil, wrath, love and mercy intersect.
How might holy God commune with sin-filled, evil-filled humans? It is only possible through the cross.
Only God could take the ugliest, darkest, most vile display of evil ever perpetrated on earth, and reveal His glory through it. And so, we refer to this day filled with darkness and evil Good Friday. We see the ugliness of humanity in shocking display. We see evil manifested. We see God’s wrath unleashed on His Son, the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed One, God Himself. And through it all, through the chaos of evil and ugliness, through the horrors of the events, we see God’s love, mercy and glory. Evil, wrath, love and mercy intersect at the cross, and God’s glory is revealed through it. Let’s step back, and I will show you how I reach that conclusion. First, let’s look at the evil.
Evil
Religious Leaders. Religious leaders plotted to kill Jesus for a long time.
Relatively early in His ministry, in chapter 5 of John, Jesus healed a man by the Pool of Bethsaida on a sabbath. After describing the event, Jesus interacted with religious leaders. John writes,
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. John 5:18
Three chapters later, in chapter 8, John writes,
They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. John 8:39-40
Three chapters later, after Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, people across the region talked about Jesus and the miraculous event. John records the event as follows:
So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. John 11:47-53
And they published orders that anyone who saw Jesus must tell the authorities where He was so that they might arrest Him.
These were upstanding men, leaders of the community, educated, respected. And they reasoned it all out so well with their utilitarian twist. If the balance consists of either one person dying or an entire nation dying, well what do you do? And it was so civilized and adhering to protocol. They called a nice meeting, ensured a quorum was present, took down minutes of the decision, all the while they were intent on murdering God Incarnate. Seemingly good men blinded to the truth, unable to see Jesus for who He is, so separated from God that they truly believed they were saving God’s holy church by killing God. How twisted is that? Could anything ever be more twisted?
Earlier, recorded in John chapter 8, Jesus said to them,
“Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” John 8:43-47
Seemingly good men followed Satan, believed Satan’s lies, fell for his deception, and perpetuated evil on earth in the most orderly, civilized, legal-looking, protocol-following, yet horrific way imaginable.
Judas. Judas, one of His closest friends, one referred to as a disciple, one of the twelve, betrayed Jesus. Scripture tells us that Satan entered Judas (see John 13:27 and Luke 22:3) and Judas carried out Satan’s bidding. This is significant. Scripture mentions demons dwelling within people, but here Satan enters Judas, one of the twelve.
Pontius Pilate. He had the power and authority to do the right thing, but he chose to go along with the crowd because he feared what would happen to his career if the crowd revolted. He knowingly sentenced an innocent man to be executed, released a guilty man in His place, and then, in ironies of ironies, publicly washed his hands to remove Jesus’ blood from himself, when Jesus’ blood is the only thing that could possibly save him. He rationalized this great act of evil by telling himself that he only did what was necessary to maintain peace and order, and he tried to distance himself from the decision, but his name will forever be linked to evil. And Jesus explains that Pilate was only doing God’s will:
Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.” John 19:11-12
The Crowds. They knowingly insisted that an innocent man be sentenced to torture and death, and a guilty man be released.
Romans. The cross was a symbol of torture, unimaginably horrific pain, public humiliation, and horrendous death. The Romans designed it as a tool of repression. The events surrounding its use were intentionally orchestrated for public display. The sentencing and torture were performed in a public forum, where crowds could watch and tell others about it. After the lashings and beating, as part of the gruesome theater, they dressed Him in a purple robe with a crown of thorns and placed a sign reading “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” The bloody pulp of a human was forced to carry the crossbeam a long distance through town and outside the city gates to the site of the execution, the long, gruesome march insured that many, many onlookers would see the agony. The site of the execution was at a busy public crossroad for maximum visibility, not only during the event, but long after.
The gruesome theater was designed to cause nightmares. The cross was a symbol of every mother and father’s greatest fear. Imagine the children crying themselves to sleep, which is exactly what the Romans wanted, to help ensure they would not grow up to be afraid, timid, compliant, and not revolutionaries.
Humans cause one another tremendous harm in a variety of ways. We see much of it on display on Good Friday, and it was all carefully calculated by people intent on maintaining power, and carried out by people merely doing their jobs.
And this forces us to see the mind-numbing horror of it all, that normal, seemingly upstanding people, pillars of society and ordinary working folks, could so easily rationalize killing the source of life.
Jesus says,
Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5:24; He says,
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10; He says,
I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
They were walking dead, blind to the truth, clinging to power, or in the crowd’s situation, riding the wave of popular sentiment, and in tragedy of tragedies, they killed the source of life.
Sin
It is easy, in our mind’s eye, to look down on these people in self-proclaimed righteous superiority, considering ourselves to be oh so much holier and closer to God than they were. We might think we are so much better and more civilized than those first century wretches. But in reality, we are much closer to them than we would ever care to admit. We are each capable of the same sort of evil. If I am honest with myself, if I truly look into my heart, I can see myself rationalizing the same behavior that led to the greatest evil ever perpetuated on earth. I can imagine rationalizing like the religious leaders did, seeing Jesus as a threat to God’s plan on earth, like Ponius Pilate, seeing Jesus as a threat to my position, like the soldiers, simply following orders. I can imagine being swept along with the rest of the crowd. We each have evil within us. We are each capable of horrific acts, and realizing this is a critical step in the path to redemption. Because if we continue moving through life with the inaccurate perception, the lie of the Deceiver, that we are good, we have no need to seek redemption, we have no need to seek the holy One and His mercy and grace.
God’s holy word makes it clear that (i) every human is a sinner (except Jesus), living in sin, surrounded by sin, (ii) God hates sin, and (iii) the wages of sin is death. We each have darkness within us, and the first step toward hope is recognizing the evil and sin within us, so that we can embrace the light of truth, because the truth and the light and the grace of Christ Jesus sets us free. Because on our own, apart from Christ Jesus, we deserve death, we deserve God’s wrath, according to God’s holy word, apart from Jesus we are “children of wrath” (see Ephesians 2:3).
Wrath
Apart from Jesus, we deserve God’s wrath. Pause and let that sink in. We deserve God’s wrath. Scripture reveals many examples of God pouring out His wrath on people. In response to Adam and Eve’s horrific choice in the garden, God cast them away from His presence, and by so doing introduced humankind to death. They suffered spiritual death in that instant and their bodies suffered the physical decay that we all know too well, conditions we inherited from them (see Genesis 3). A mere three chapters later in Scripture we see God’s patience with humanity wearing thin, and after repeatedly warning people about the wrath to come, He brought a flood destroying all the creatures on earth, saving but a remnant (see Genesis 6-9). Ten chapters later God grew weary of witnessing the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah, and He sent angels to destroy the region by raining sulfur and fire down upon it (see Genesis 19). God revealed His wrath when He struck down Uzzah for touching the Ark of God (see 2 Samuel 6:7). Jesus revealed His righteous anger when He cleared the temple (see John 2:13-16, Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, and Luke 19:45-48), and God revealed the ultimate expression of His wrath when He sacrificed His Son Jesus Christ on the cross, offering Him as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
The Cross
We are sinners. We deserve God’s wrath. We deserve His raining sulfur fire, we deserve His flood, we deserve to be struck down, but Christ bore our sins. God imputed our sinfulness to Christ Jesus and He received the wrath we deserve. Peter writes,
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds[i] you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. 1 Peter 2:24-25
Paul writes,
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21
God poured out His wrath on Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, the Son.
Evil, Wrath, Love and Mercy Converge
The cross is the place evil, wrath, love and mercy converge. On the surface of the cross we see evil and wrath, but through the cross we see God’s love and mercy. Through His suffering, death and resurrection, we are saved, granted life, new life, life abundant, eternal life. Through Christ Jesus we can commune with God.
So the cross, that which was once a symbol of painful death, terror evoking fears and nightmares like no other, an instrument used by an occupying force to insure compliance through fear, through Christ Jesus, the cross was transformed into the ultimate symbol of God’s love, mercy and grace. Only God is capable of that sort of complete transformation, and it’s a symbol of the transformation available to us through Christ Jesus.
Apart from Christ Jesus, we are dead. We were dead, but God made us alive in Christ. We were separated from God, but God reconciled us to Him. Through Christ Jesus, our sins are forgiven, we are justified, we are freed, we are cleansed.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. John 3:16-18
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 2 Corinthians 5:17-19
I recall seeing a video of Ravi Zacharias answering questions in a large lecture hall. A young woman asked him about good and evil, and whether he believes some people are inherently good and others inherently evil. Ravi talked for a while about Buddhism and the Dali Lama, and then he said something along the lines of “But Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to give dead people life.”
Writing to the church in Ephesus, writing to believers, followers of Christ, Christians, Paul begins writing about the gospel saying,
“You were dead through trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world…. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:1-6).
He declares it to be so for each reader, presenting a universal truth. You were dead. And if you haven’t heard His voice and believe you still are dead. You were dead through sin following the world’s path, but God made us alive through Christ Jesus. But God gave us new life through Christ Jesus. But God saved us through Christ Jesus, through His loving mercy, through His grace, by bestowing faith upon us. We were dead and we deserve His wrath, but God did all this for us. We were dead, but God….
“You were dead….” What does this mean? When was I dead? When did I gain life? Jesus says,
Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. John 5:21; He says,
Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5:24; and He says,
Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. John 5:25
Each person is born into this fallen world spiritually dead, separated from God, but God raises the dead and gives them life the moment they hear Jesus’ voice and believe. God the Father raises the dead and gives them life. Jesus gives life. You were dead, but through Christ Jesus, God gave you new life, spiritual life, abundant life, eternal life.
Conclusion
The events leading to the cross reveal the evil, darkness and awfulness of the world, and ugliness of humanity. The events of the cross reveal God’s wrath as He pours it out on His Son, Christ Jesus, the sinless, righteous, holy, pure One. The only acceptable sacrifice for the sin of the world. On the surface we see darkness, sin, evil, suffering and wrath, but through the cross we see God’s mercy, love and holy grace revealed. Through the cross God reveals His glory. Through the cross we see love, light and life. Through the cross, through Christ Jesus, through God’s holy grace, God makes us alive. We move from death to life.
How can we possibly call a day filled with so much evil Good Friday? Without it there would be no good news.
May God shine His glory through you. As Paul writes at Ephesians 2:10, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Amen.